Recently, there have been researches on various liquid feeding mechanisms and methods where a filling container and ultrafine flow passages are formed on a piece of microchip, and a sample or a liquid specimen is fed and subjected to reaction under controlled conditions for a gene analysis, a blood examination or the like.
In such an analysis or examination, it is crucial to prevent an artificial error such as the contamination of a sample or a specimen, an error in specimen injection or an error in an amount of test reagent. Particularly when a specimen is used in DNA identification or the like, accuracy and reliability are required in injection of a specimen into an analyzer. To cope with such requirement, patent literature 1 discloses a specimen filling device for injecting a specimen into a microchip. The specimen filling device is mounted with a specimen package having a specimen chamber filled with a specimen, and when a projecting part formed on the specimen chamber is subjected to an external force, a portion of a bottom part is released, thereby discharging the specimen.
This specimen filling device is recognized as effective for preventing an artificial error such as contamination of a specimen, an error in specimen injection or an error in an amount of test reagent. However, the specimen filling device has the following drawback with respect to discharging of a specimen.
That is, in this type of test reagent container, during an operation of discharging a test reagent to the outside by inflating a film with compressed air as shown in FIG. 4(c) of patent literature 1, excessive stretching may break a portion of the film thus preventing sufficient discharge of a test reagent to the outside.
Further, when an amount of test reagent used in an analysis is small, the test reagent liquid may remain in a test reagent chamber, particularly in an inner corner portion formed between a side wall and a bottom part, and may potentially affect the results of the analysis or examination. In view of the above-mentioned circumstances, there has been a demand for a test reagent container where a test reagent can be reliably discharged without remaining in the container even when the amount of test reagent is small.